Saturday, 30 July 2016

It
wasn't until Neil asked where the Away fans end was, that I
remembered just how different American sports and their supporters
are to the British way of thinking. If its true that you can tell a
lot about a nation and a culture through the sports they choose to
pursue and how they pursue said sports, then Britain and America's
special relationship is not as close as some might think.

Neil
and I were sat, along with my wife, Kelly, high above first base at
Miller Park, the home stadium of the Milwaukee Brewers, Wisconsin's
only Major League Baseball team and Neil was trying to find his
bearings. Come to think of it, looking back, he wasn't the only one.

Sometimes,
when my working week runs smoothly, the weather stays just below
unbearable on my own personal humidity scale and I manage to grasp
the intricacies of some overly simple part of living here in America
(such as operating the tumble dryer) I try to tell myself that I'm
finally getting my bearings, learning my way around this deeply
complex country and generally doing pretty well. Around about the
time I get to thinking like this, circumstance tends to clip me
around the ear and tell me I've still got a long way to go in
learning to understand this foreign country.

Truth
is, I am, on the whole, doing pretty well on the whole adjustment
thing. I've learned, in most occasions, what is a correct amount to
tip in restaurants, I'm getting better at understanding how jobs work
over here and I have some inkling of how tax returns work.

However
despite this, I still have a long, long, way to go.

It
is fairly accurate to say that when we British think of the
Americans, it has always been with a sense of familial relationship
as if America is a younger sibling with a rebellious attitude and
loud taste in clothes and music but family all the same. We don't
think of ourselves as foreigners, not deep down, as saturated as we
often feel with American movies, music and culture. But we are, even
though we don't feel it and so, more often than not I find that my
bearings are still a little eschew.

Despite
following the NFL(National Football League), since before I was a
teenager and gamely making an effort to do the same with the NHL
(that's the National Hockey League) this past season, MLB, or Major
League Baseball, is still mostly an undiscovered country to me.

On
the verge of moving here, it occurred to me that I should probably
choose a professional team to follow from each of the major sports in
the United States. I figured that it would give me something to talk
about at work with the guys, if nothing else.

So
I set about choosing five teams using criteria which, quite often,
verged on arbitrary and in at least one occasion, just plain
ridiculous. I have followed the “Green Bay Packers” since well
before the onset of puberty, so that was a given. Wisconsin doesn't
have an NHL team so I looked across the Mississippi to my wife's
people in Minnesota and the “Minnesota Wild”. The “Minnesota
Timberwolves” stole my basketball allegiance with their logo,
which, unlike the “Milwaukee Bucks” logo, looks absolutely
nothing like a dead deer's head stuffed and mounted on someone's
wall. Living in Madison, my college sports team had to be the
“Wisconsin Badgers” and then I had to address the baseball
situation.

Baseball
was definitely at the bottom of my list of U.S. Sporting pastimes to
get into. At times in Britain, we can see baseball as merely an
overrated game of rounders, a schoolyard sport elevated to a
ridiculous level of seriousness, but over here it is seen as
“America's Game”. So I eventually realised that I had to at least
find a way of taking it all in and learn to like it.

Baseball
is the oldest of America's professional sports, as it was definitely
the earliest to be organised into anything approaching the structure
of a modern sporting organisation. The National League, which is one
of the two leagues which make up Major League Baseball, (the other is
the American League) was founded on February 2nd 1876.
This makes it the oldest of the professional sports leagues in the
United States, by far. The NHL wasn't founded till 1917 and until the
1960s only had six teams in operation most of the time, the NFL
likewise wasn't founded until 1919 and didn't reach a national
following until the advent of television in the 1950s and 60s. The
National Basketball Association is strictly a postwar organisation,
not being founded until 1946.

To
put it simply, before the advent of television, cable sports
broadcasts, multi-media extravaganzas, pay per view internet
podcasts; before the birth of our increasingly connected hyper-active
information super-highway influenced world; before all of that,
Baseball reigned supreme over the American nation and its collective
psyche.

Even
now it has the oldest teams. There are still teams present in MLB
that were found on that very first National League rosta, albeit with
different names or locations. And it is this longevity that separates
baseball from other sports here in the U.S. Baseball, I am learning,
truly represents something deeper than just sport to many Americans.
It is more than a sport, it is memory, nostalgia, a symbol of a more
innocent time that many worry that this nation has forgot.

Baseball
is the sport that comforted them through the great depression. It
came of age as America itself did, soldiers in the Civil War playing
it on hastily constructed diamonds in camp. Then it grew to
professionalism at the the same time as the United States started to
look beyond its borders to the rest of the world. In the 1960s, Paul
Simon, caught up in the social upheaval and artistic milieu of
counter-culture, desperately searches around to find an image to
denote innocence, nostalgia and integrity for his generation. He ends
up looking to a baseball player, Joe Di Maggio, asking where he has
gone, as if baseball could, even then, save America from its own
culture wars. Di Maggio, “Joltin' Joe” proved that maybe Simon
was right in that assumption, when they eventually met Di Maggio
asked Simon whether he was calling Di Maggio to account for something
he'd done wrong. Simon merely said that Di Maggio was a hero and they
were in short supply.

Baseball
is innocence to Americans, its also dreams and nostalgia and echoes
of the past. Kevin Costner builds a baseball field in a cornfield to
find absolution in the arms of a father he couldn't talk to because
of the difference in generations. So having realised this, it seemed
that I should promote baseball further up my list of U.S. sports to
start following.

Which
is why Neil and I were sitting alongside Kelly, in the seats of
Miller Park, watching my final choice of baseball team, the
“Milwaukee Brewers” take on the “St Louis Cardinals” one of
the oldest teams in baseball.

Milwaukee
is Wisconsin's most populous city and, according to my sources, the
fifth largest urban area in the mid-west. Located in south east of
Wisconsin, it lies on Lake Michigan, making it the northern end of a
band of built up urban areas that wrap around the western and
southern sides of the lake. The other end lies at Chicago, Illinois,
of course. And in between them lies cities like Kenosha and Racine.

According
to the all knowing Wikipedia, Milwaukee revels in a plethora of
nicknames, such as : “cream city”, “brew city”, “beer
city”, “brewtown”, “beer town”, “miltown”, “the mil”,
“mke”, “the city of festivals” and “Deutsch-Athens”
(German Athens)

Like
many other cities within Wisconsin, Milwaukee was founded by French
settlers coming down from Canada, but as time went on it became
defined more by German and Polish influences along with lesser
amounts of immigrants from other central and eastern European
nations. If Minnesota, as I mentioned before, is known for its
Scandinavian heritage then Milwaukee and much of Wisconsin, is known
for its central European roots. Why else would the official “state
dance” be “the Polka”?

Milwaukee
celebrates its German heritage, glorifying in the German sausages
known as “Bratwurst”, here known more often as “brats” and
often boiled in a mixture of beer and onions and then thrown on a
grill. They are pretty amazing and end up tasting like the best hot
dogs the world could ever have created. They also love their beer,
for many years Milwaukee was the largest single producer of beer, in
the world. Despite losing three out of the four major breweries that
used to make their home there, its still has the last one, “Miller”
brewery, which is still one of America's most popular beers.

Milwaukee
is also known for its festivals, with one happening virtually every
week. This is a city of celebration. It even has its own Oktoberfest
something not seen that much outside Germany, apart from in the rest
of Wisconsin, that is. It boasts “Summerfest”, a massive music
festival that boasts many more acts, three times as many days and
definitely better weather than wading around in a muddy field in the
English countryside and convincing everyone that Glastonbury Music
Festival is not actually a colossal waste of money.

Milwaukee
is also the closest Wisconsin comes to an old-fashioned, working
class, blue collar, industrial powerhouse of a town, like Detroit,
back in the day, or Pittsburgh. During the 1920s, 30s and 40s, it was
the only city that the Socialist Party of America made a serious
impact in politics and city government.

So
what better place to go watch baseball in Wisconsin, or for that
matter, any where in the Mid-West. A quintessential American
industrial city, a melting pot of races, cultures, festivals and
“America's Game”, the only game that travelled to this continent
at least partially formed. The pomp, ceremony and the history.

The
Milwaukee Brewers are the city's second major league franchise, since
the Milwaukee Braves (originally the Boston Braves, who moved to the
city in 1953.) left in 1965 for Atlanta. The Brewers first played in
Milwaukee in 1970 and from then until the year 2000, they played at
“County Stadium”. Then they built “Miller Park”

There
is always a discussion when building American sports stadiums about
whether to build an enclosed, indoor stadium or a traditional,
outdoor, bowl-shaped ground.

Many
areas, in the U.S., have extreme climates, of course. Arizona, for
instance, with its desert heat or New Orleans, with its marshy, river
delta humidity. In these cities, an indoor, temperature, controlled
environment makes sense, it is even desirable for sporting contests.
However, conversely, there are other sports teams, such as the
veteran leviathans of the NFL's National Football Conference North,
the “Green Bay Packers” and the “Chicago Bears”, who use the
adverse weather conditions of their open air grounds to intimidate
opponents. (If you interested in just how “adverse” this can be,
search for the “Icebowl” game of the 1960s on the Internet.)

Miller
Park is actually something in between, a stadium boasting a
fan-shaped retractable roof which opens and closes to match weather
conditions. When we went it was a Tuesday night game and there was
the threat of rain. So the roof was closed.

So
back, eventually, to where I started, in answer to Neil's question,
there is no home end or away end in American sports in general. Home
and Away supporters sit together and enjoy games together. While
quite willing to “trash talk” opposing teams fans in the run up
to the game, there is very little “hooliganism” associated with
any American sport.

When
watching such a game, it rapidly becomes obvious why many people in
the UK don't like watching U.S. sports. In many nations, particularly
the UK, sports are contests of strength, wit, skill and dedication.
They are all about the game itself, the spectators are almost
incidental. American sport, on the other hand, is different. My
father always complains to me that the NFL, for instance, is not
actually a sport, its theatre, a spectacle for the masses and he's
only partially wrong.

American
sports acknowledge the need to entertain, to put on a show to reward
the spectator for coming. It is an attractive package, even though to
say so seems like a betrayal to the no-nonsense northern town I grew
up in. I have to say I'd rather watch a spectacle of some
over-the-top American sport, designed for the fans as much as anyone
else, than spend just under two hours on a wind swept, rain drenched,
Saturday afternoon in February with nothing to take my mind away from
the home team's dismal performance than a round of “Crossbar
Challenge” at half-time and “Scunny Bunny” running round the
sidelines like he's on some illicit substance.

Maybe
that's one of the reasons we British, struggle to get our bearings
over here. We're traditionalists, in it for the sport itself and
while I admit to enjoying the trappings of U.S. sporting contests, it
is with a fair amount of guilt. That this is too much ceremony for a
game. “You're coming to watch the game, why do you need anything
else?” We like to think we're on the right side of this argument,
but maybe we're not.

America
seems to accept fundamental concepts of modern sports that we British
choose to ignore, even in their oldest game. They acknowledge that
sport is a business. That teams are a brand. That if you want to
appeal to families, you need a greater incentive that promising them
they won't be sat next to a fan, screaming obscenities, questioning
the parentage of the referee and chanting about if he was a bird, he
would fly away and defecate on the away team's home ground.

So,
here, the prices are generally better, the food in the stadiums is
better. I had cheese curds and a brat and although I had a soda, Neil
and Kelly both had a beer. This isn't the sort of place to give you a
luke-warm pukka pie which you have to devour in 15 minutes while
wondering how full the toilets are going to be.

When
a home run is scored in Miller Park, there are fireworks under the
roof, at the New England Patriots, a group of minutemen fire off a
musket volley to greet touchdowns and Tampa Bay's Buccaneers employ a
cannon shot from the pirate ship built into their home stadium to
signal the same result.

This
is still alien to me, as much as I enjoy it. We British, are purists,
closing our eyes often, to the business-like footing of modern sports
and shaking our collective fists at so-called progress.

We
still believe that the point is to compete, even if we have no hope
of winning, why else do we send so many athletes to the Winter
Olympics when it barely snows at home anymore.

Maybe,
we're not purists, just fearful pessimists. Maybe that's why I
struggle to get my bearings. The Americans are the ultimate
optimists. We look warily across the Atlantic, not wanting the Yanks
to come and mess up our games with their brash lights and
commercialised competitions. They see as part and parcel of making
sports fun and inclusive to all. Even in baseball, where during the
game we watched, there were at least two sing-a-longs, a mascot race
involving different sausages, the “Famous Racing Sausages” and
numerous chances to get yourself on the scoreboard with your
outrageous dancing to the music played at the end of each inning.

So,
maybe this blog is deeper thinking than some of the others, but I do
wonder whether this is what it feels like to be an immigrant, ever
torn between two ways of thinking, even when people share a language
like we do. Maybe its about what you decide to keep from home and
what you decide to discard. And maybe sports and entertainment and
other forms of popular culture are where you're going to feel it the
most. I am not sorry to be British and to have grown up in the North
of England but I'm also now aware that no country is totally right
and sometimes even the things we hold on to tightly are the things
that should be traded in.

So
I told Neil about the fans and we had a good time. The Brewers lost
but they really aren't that good of a team at the moment. Thanks for
reading.

Sunday, 17 July 2016

In
the not too distant past, as in within the last month, a man who
never really expected to achieve his goal in the first time of asking
stood and like a proud Olympic gold medalist made a bold triumphant
statement, his name was Nigel Farage, the leader of the Eurosceptic
United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)and his nation, the United
Kingdom, had just voted to leave the European Union. As he basked in
the glow of the slightly unexpected referendum result, he declared
with typical grandiose verve and overly dramatic flair that that day
should from now be known as the U.K.s Independence Day.

Now
I'm not passing judgment on any of the various arguments that have
been made or will be made before, during and after that monumental
referendum campaign nor am I passing judgment on Mr Farage himself.
Far too many words have been written in anger, sarcasm and arrogant
superiority, by both sides of said debate and upon every single
medium of information dispersal available to the world. I would only
point out, however, that no part of the United Kingdom has been
conquered by an external force for nigh on a thousand years and so
his statement while it will be loved by his supporters and hated by
his detractors will probably be considered in the light of history as
excitable ideological hyperbole.

The
reason being, the UK is one of the oldest states in the world, has
one of the oldest Parliaments and was formerly a major colonial
power. The whole reasoning behind the “Leave” campaign's stance
is that the United Kingdom has never bowed to anyone, least of all,
in their mind, to a group of faceless bureaucrats in some European
city somewhere eating foreign food and trying to get rid of pounds
and ounces and other British ways of doing things. “Britons never,
never, never, shall be slaves” displays the attitude of a people
who have never needed an Independence Day.

The
truth is, Independence Days are the reserve of colonies. They are a
commemoration of the moment a new country cuts the constitutional
apron strings that ties them to a mother country and step out onto
the international stage, like a newborn, blinking in the light. It is
for new countries to lay claim to, not former imperial powers.
Independence Days remember violent births not the slightly bad
tempered “conscious uncoupling” of recent European debate.

I
say all of this by way of introduction to this addition of my
impossibly popular blog ( I say impossibly popular, I do know that it
gets read. I think...) and to acknowledge that due to the
interruption of everyday life into the complex act of electronic
epistle composition, I find that I now don't just have to recount the
events of my friend Neil's visit over Memorial Day but also now I
find that the United States Independence Day has come and gone and I
should say something about that as well. Neatly both occasions took
place in the same location. I spent Memorial Day in one place and
then we were back there for Independence Day. Which gives the events
a certain symmetry and also makes it easier to write. I don't have to
describe the same place twice and being a slightly lazy writer, that
does have an appeal to my desire for an easy life.

And
what was that location, I hear you query. It was a cabin and a lake
under open skies, the shallows all sun dappled under the trees. It
was a dock and a boat, with fishing rods and lazy moments where time
seems to stand still and all is well in the world. Which is
admittedly about par for the course around here.

Despite
the fact that I have waxed poetic about my wife's home state of
Minnesota and when I last wrote, I left Neil and I stuck in the
largest Mall in the United States which is situated in Minnesota.
Despite all of this, the lake was in Wisconsin. Admittedly it was
situated in the North West of Wisconsin and was far closer to the
Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St Paul than to our humble apartment here
in Madison but it still lay in Wisconsin.

The
cabin belongs to my wife's aunt and uncle who own an agricultural
supply company “up North” as people in Wisconsin say. They are a
wonderful couple who have always been wonderfully supportive of my
wife and I throughout the length of our courtship and actually were
able to travel to the UK for our wedding which was a blessing. They
are also accomplished in all the things that people in the north of
Wisconsin should be.

Wisconsin
is a beautiful state and each day I live here I find that I fall in
love with it more. It is a state of great forests, lakes, rolling
hills, lazy rivers, exciting and thriving cities. It has the
Mid-West's continental climate of warm humid summers and freezing
cold winters, its no exaggeration that Lambeau Field, the home
stadium of the state's NFL team, my beloved Green Bay Packers, is
known far and wide as “The Frozen Tundra”.

The
state was originally settled by the French and discovered by them as
early as 1634, barely twenty years after the first British settlement
in the New World. They came for the furs, trapping animals such as
beavers and trading their pelts back to the old world. Then came
miners, many originally from Cornwall in the United Kingdom, who when
the harsh winters came used their mines as shelters burrowing in like
badgers, giving the state it's nickname, “The Badger State”.

Milwaukee
grew and developed a famous brewing industry. Kenosha became known as
a stereotypical 50s Mid-Western town twenty years after the fact when
“Happy Days” was set there. The Republican party was founded in
the state in a small white schoolhouse in the equally small
settlement of Ripon, Wisconsin. Madison's radical university politics
of the 1960s led to it being named “The Berkeley of the Mid-West”

It
is an agricultural state, famous for its dairy farming, cheese and
bizarrely enough, its cranberries. Wisconsin produces more
cranberries than any other state in the Union. And you thought it was
only New England states that got in on that kind of action. It also
produces a good proportion of the United States' cheese, which is why
Packer fans wear foam hats in the form of cheese to games (Go
Cheeseheads)

Everyone,
it seems in Wisconsin, fishes, hunts and camps or knows somebody who
fishes, hunts and camps. This is especially true the further north
you go in the state. Wisconsin has a population of roughly 5 and half
million people but a total land area of over 54 thousand square
miles. And when you consider that Milwaukee and the surrounding area
account for somewhere in the region of 2 million people out of that
total and that Madison and its metropolitan area account for
approaching 600 thousand people, that means there's a lot of empty
space out there to hunt and fish in. Another point to take into
account is that all the state's large cities lie in the bottom half
of the state which means the North is full of excellent opportunities
for fishing, hunting, camping and all those other things that John
Candy failed so badly at doing in “The Great Outdoors” (and yes,
there are bears), When Wisconsin feels like some outdoors recreation,
they head North.

Which
brings me back, via a wide tangent I know, to the point that Mrs
Geekrant's aunt and uncle are real Northern Wisconsin people, he
hunts upon occasion, they both fish, they both ice fish which is a
pursuit which I would approach with some trepidation. They once woke
up one morning to find a bear on their porch and as I previously
mentioned they supply some great agricultural machinery.

So
being born in the United Kingdom, in the untamed semi urbanised wilds
of the North of England and having very little training in outdoorsy
things, (other than how to make a fire and pitch a tent.) when they
bought a cabin on a lake, I was obviously ecstatic to spend some time
up there.

On
Memorial Day, we drove up from my In-Laws place in Minnesota in
Melissa's convertible with the top down, (a new experience for me as
let's face it, an open topped car in Britain is a recipe to get
rained on and after my mother finally dragged my father's hands of
the keys of his beloved, yet apparently slightly dilapidated, MG long
before I was born. She was never allowing him to buy a new one...
well its not really practical with four kids.) We crossed the
Mississippi at Red Wing and wound our way through quiet small towns
and past red painted barns and eventually reached the cabin.

The
name of the cabin is “Bluegill Bay” and it lies next to the road
as it curves to turn around the edge of the lake. It lies shaded by
trees with a little dock from which to fish from and a pontoon boat
anchored there. Mrs Geekrant's Uncle Jim greeted us as usual wearing
dungarees or bib overalls as they're known here. He's an authority on
many of the things you didn't think you needed to know about living
here, but later find out that you really, really did.

Not
long after we got their, my brothers in law turned up, one with his
children, all sun bleached blonde hair and blue eyes. It turned out
that Mrs Geekrant's other aunt and uncle were already out in their
own boat they'd bought with them fishing. So Neil's first American
holiday was spent with my wife's extended family, messing about on
the lake. Which, I'm learning, is exactly how its supposed to be.

We
fished, hanging rods of the end of the dock, wrapping worms around
hooks and angling for the bluegill, sunfish and crappie that make up
a lot what are known as panfish here. The fish could be seen, the sun
cutting through the water reflecting off their scales as they took
the bait.

The
lake is surrounded by trees, shading the banks and creating privacy
for the other cabins one could see poking out in places from gaps in
the foliage. The sun was brilliant overhead, we ate brats and salad
and chips and all the other foods that make American picnic food some
of the best in the world and time stops and slows down and you know
what peace is, and solitude is, away from cellphones and business
meetings and the next season of “Whatever Country you happen to be
in right now's Got Talent” And then we took the boat out.

We
went out twice, the pontoon speeding its way round the relatively
small lake and floating slowly past lily pads and mini marshes. We
marvelled at the size of the cabins on the shore, less cabins than
mini mansions with outdoor kitchens and guest quarters bigger than
the house I grew up in.

Then
my wife grew nervous, as here Uncle Jim asked me if I wanted to drive
the boat. Now I can't even drive a car and mechanical things have
never exactly been my forte but I've been getting quite comfortable
on my father in law's ATVs after I nearly flipped his brand new one
last autumn so I took the plunge and hoped that I didn't make
everyone else take the plunge as well.

The
controls aren't that difficult, just a steering wheel and a hand
operated throttle. I drove us around one of the lakes of the chain we
were in for a while, grateful that my niece and nephew were wearing
life jackets and then with my wife mentioning slightly stridently in
my ear that we didn't want to crash the boat and ruin our
relationship with her relations, I steeled myself. In one place, a
roadway crossed a narrow channel that separated one lake from another
and that was the way Uncle Jim wanted me to go. So I decided he must
know what he was doing trusting me, so I went for it.

I
succeeded, with Uncle Jim and my brother in law standing in the stern
to push the boat of the wall if I ran into them. The irony amused me,
I have successfully steered a boat for a good ten minutes before I've
driven a car successfully for ten seconds. I was stupidly impressed
with myself.

Neil
fished most of that day, sat with a fishing rod hung over the edge of
the dock, I think he enjoyed the solitude, even in the midst of the
crowd of family. Maybe that it something we've lot in the United
Kingdom over the years. The ability to be alone. To be separated from
the rest of civilisation and find ourselves in a place where nature
has more hold on the land than we do. I wonder if that is something
that my friend found there, for he certainly enjoyed his time at the
cabin that day.

When
we returned for Independence Day, we found more of the same solitude.
This time only myself and Kelly (Mrs Geekrant), joined her Uncle Jim
and Aunt Sue at Bluegill Bay.

We
also stayed there for two nights, sleeping in a small extra cabin
behind the main cabin that Sue called the “shiner shack”. Being
uninformed and arrogantly certain of my own deductive skills, I
assumed this referred to moonshine, but I was put right on that
score, a shiner is apparently a small fish used a bait, traditionally
prepared before being used to fish with.

It
was a beautiful cabin to stay in, simple and peaceful, the reflected
sunlight from the lake breaking through the shades and dancing on the
wooden ceiling. It bought to mind boathouses in the years before the
Second World War, where the aristocracy had whiled away their time.

I
slept peacefully there that night, as far from the lights of towns
and the endless noise of never ceasing traffic as I have ever been.
Outside, the stars were as bright and as numerous as I have ever seen
them. Somewhere in these woods, bears make their home and raccoons
scurry along tree branches. Herons flew down to the lake shore merely
feet away from us and geese, ironically, played chicken on the road.

We
fished off the boat on the Sunday and I caught a large Bluegill,
which was an achievement for me, as I was worried that it would prove
to be similar to a lot of my practical endeavours, fruitless. But it
proved to be otherwise. We fished off the boat for most of the
weekend, ending up terribly sun-burnt (at least in Kelly's case) and
bitten up by mosquitoes (in my case, I must get used to the fact that
if I wear shorts at sunset, I am presenting an all you can eat buffet
to the little blighters.) but happy and relaxed at the end of it all.

We
lay in giant inflatable tyre toys for two or three hours, floating on
the lake, completely relaxed. However when I came to extricate myself
from said device I found that my short legs and tubby tummy left me
in the same state as a tortoise. There was much flapping around until
I was able to get out. Kelly thought it was funny... it very well may
have been, I could not possibly comment.

There
was a boat parade the next day, the 4th, the inhabitants
of the cabins choosing to celebrate Independence by a flotilla of
craft bedecked, for the most part, in the Stars and Stripes. Their
identity wrapped up in all that that flag represents.

For
it is to that flag they pledge their allegiance. They are not tied to
a Queen like we British, or to similarity of tribe like the Germans
or France or even to a hardcore hard-line ideology like the Chinese
or the Cubans. They pledge their allegiance to Independence and to
Freedom, acknowledging that those two principles mean something
different to everyone else but that their nation was founded and
still exists to discover whether a people can reconcile those
differences and establish “a new birth of freedom-and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people...”
and that such a government “shall not perish from the earth.”

This
blog started talking about one man declaring the United Kingdom's
independence, I have already made the point that this might be a
little over the top but once upon a time, men truly did break away
from a larger power in a way that cost them their lives through war,
not their sanity through pathetic mean spirited vitriol on social
media and established “on
this continent a new nation”.

I
am a subject of her majesty and her United Kingdom lately moved to
this great nation and all its contradictions. All its potential for
good and for ill. I love it as only a immigrant can, looking in from
the outside. I first went to the cabin on Memorial Day and returned
on Independence Day. In this article I have quoted Abraham Lincoln's
Gettysburg Address, given at the dedication of the Civil War cemetery
in November of 1863. I am realising all the more, the people still
hold their flag in the same honour as they did on the fields of
Gettysburg, 153 years ago.

Our flag represents the union of three
kingdoms, a physical reality, theirs represents the ideal of a their
nation far more than just a reality. This is their symbol of their
nation, all its successes and failures and as it fluttered behind our
boat on a sun drenched 4th
of July, I caught a glimpse, maybe, of just what that means to an
American.

P.S.
For those who wonder how Neil and I got out of the Mall of America,
think about it. Neil knows his way around Abercrombie and Fitch, he
is an accomplished shopper. The only difficulty was getting him to
make a decision on a sweater.